By TED MILLER, P-I COLUMNIST

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, August 8, 2006

The subject is trust and the speaker is Tyrone Willingham. That sounds like a snoozer -- at best a series of predictable platitudes that reveal little -- only Willingham momentarily takes a hard conversational turn that perks up a pair of sagging ears.

"I saw this commercial the other night," he begins. "This guy is on the Internet with one of these dating services. Maybe you've seen it."

Maybe. But the mind is spinning, imagining Willingham sitting on a sofa -- maybe even kicked back with his feet up -- remote control in hand, paying attention to such a commercial.

He continues: "This guy is typing: 'I like to take long walks. I like to do this. I like to do that ...' And then it's, 'OK, marry me!' Now, no one in their right mind would do that."

He concludes, "You always have to earn trust."

Connecting the dots of his analogy, the message is this: Willingham knows he didn't completely earn the Huskies' trust last year.

It's not a matter of him being untrustworthy or dishonest. It's not a matter of players doubting his schemes or abilities.

It's about four tumultuous years. It's about three head coaches. It's about massive change.

Trust? It's not automatic.

Trust is a matter of Willingham inspiring complete confidence. It's a matter of players looking up at him during exhausting, seemingly endless practices and finding motivation because they know the work and repetition are making them better. It's a matter of players believing during the dire moments of a game that he's got a plan that will lead them to victory.

Trust, see, builds confidence. And confidence wins in the fourth quarter when the screws tighten.

The Huskies didn't win in the fourth quarter last year. In fact, two words relate how their season spun from respectable mediocrity onto a 2-9 trash heap: fourth quarter.

They were outscored 116-70 in the fourth. They led three games in the fourth and then threw up on themselves. Another game, Arizona State, was nip-and-tuck entering the final frame, at least until the Sun Devils erupted for 20 unanswered points.

The Huskies have been nearly doubled up in the fourth quarter over the past two seasons (191-97).

End result: One Pac-10 victory and a fan base that is turning away in dramatic numbers because they trust no longer.

Like last year. And the year before. Daniels follows Brad Vanneman, who followed Khalif Barnes, as the team's articulate senior offensive lineman promising this is the year the Huskies turn things around and return to glory.

They talk about how this team is closer than the previous one. They talk about how hard everyone worked over the summer. They talk about proving media doubters wrong. They talk about confidence.

There's another problem.

"We won't get that confidence, get that swagger that everybody talks about, until we win," Willingham said.

That's why trust comes first. The Huskies are going to have to blindly buy into Willingham for the 2006 season in order to become what he will constantly tell them they can be instead of what nearly everyone else is saying.

The first step is continuity. Fifteen starters return from last year, including nine seniors. Eight of nine assistants are back. This is the first time the senior offensive linemen have been overseen by the same coach two consecutive years.

Next comes motivation. The Huskies seniors should need no more than this: Duplicate last season's two victories, and they leave the UW having produced the most miserable and unsuccessful careers of the program's modern era.

Then comes wisdom. The most lucid thinking that emerged from Tuesday's meet-and-greet luncheon was this little nugget from Daniels in which he explains his "Zen and the Art of Fourth Quarter Maintenance."

"The secret to the fourth quarter is all at practice," Daniels said. "The fourth quarter is all about conditioning and mentality."

In other words, the Huskies started winning fourth quarters last spring. And this summer. And yesterday. And tomorrow.

Or they didn't. And won't.

Absent any external reasons to believe in themselves -- experience, preseason projections -- they've got to look within. They must believe they deserve to win.

Willingham will tell them they do. Endlessly. He will cajole, provoke and goad with every coaching trick he has.

His message: Trust me. Buy in.

"Oh, it's complete," Daniels said of the trust issue. "This is his team."